Month: August 2018

Hey everybody!
It’s been a bit crazy for Warhammer news during August, I’m not entirely sure if I’ve managed to digest it all yet! With the reveals from Warhammer Fest two weeks ago, and now the NOVA Open reveals, we’re going to be in for some amazing times as hobbyists and gamers for a good while to come!

Let’s start with Warhammer Fest, as it was so long ago now. The news that the Horus Heresy series is coming to an end before the actual Siege of Terra itself I find quite interesting, and I’m a little bit worried that it means we’re going to be in for another drawn out series as we see the culmination of Horus’ betrayal. It’s also really weird that the series The Horus Heresy doesn’t actually conclude the events of the Heresy, if you know what I mean. But James Swallow is a good author, and I did like his Flight of the Eisenstein, so I’m hoping for good things as he draws the proceedings to a close.

Of course, we’ve had a lot of stuff for Adeptus Titanicus coming out this month, so I suppose it’s about time I addressed this point now: I am not a fan of this game. Betrayal at Calth, while it’s Space Marine on Space Marine violence, was nevertheless an interesting game. Adeptus Titanicus, being hulking war machine vs hulking war machine, just doesn’t interest me in the same way. I get the sense that it is appealing to those with more nostalgia for the olden days, and the original iteration of the game (those at my local store are all part of the Old Guard), but it just sounds far too boring and bland, and I don’t think the fact that it’s a completely different scale is helping matters – at least Betrayal at Calth and all of the other boxed games they produce have included miniatures that could be used in regular games.

Something in its favour though – I love the fact that we can talk about Games Workshop and “all the other boxed games they produce”. They really are becoming a Workshop of Games now, and I love it!

Rogue Trader! The big box expansion for Kill Team is coming out in September, and I’m really very excited to get my hands on what look like amazing, weird, and very different minis. Perhaps most excitingly of all, though, is the little paragraph at the end of that announcement, saying that we can use both the Rogue Trader crew and the mutants in regular 40k! Didn’t see that one coming!

Codex: Imperial Agents, anyone?

So, even though I already have quite a lot on the go with regards painting projects, I’m looking forward to this quite a bit. It’s that sense of borrowed nostalgia once again. I wasn’t around for Rogue Trader back in the day, of course, but it’s something that looms so large in the background lore, and indeed, the meta world of the game as a whole, that I can’t help but feel excited at the prospect of something so iconic to the grim darkness of the far future finally coming to the tabletop!

So October (sorry, Orktober) is going to be the month of the greenskins, and it’s likely the Codex will be coming then, too. With the Space Wolves getting theirs last weekend, does this mean the Genestealer Cults will get theirs in September, maybe? Anyway. I’m not a big Ork fan – I play against them often enough, so it’ll be fun to go Codex-to-Codex against them now, but there’s very little else about the release that I can say, if I’m honest. It’s always good to see new models that replace the older ones with stuff that looks this good, so there is definitely that!

Speed Freeks seems to be a bit like the Gangs of Commorragh boxed game, in that it involves pure vehicle combat within a single faction, but is including a lot of new models – it seems GW likes to launch new kits this way nowadays, which isn’t always a bad thing, as it allows you to flesh out an army while getting the new stuff, usually with a decent saving.

Something that unites both sets of announcements, though, is the new Adepta Sororitas stuff coming – Emperor willing – next year. From Warhammer Fest, we got to see some renders of the weapons – exciting enough, for sure, but I can’t say as it really interested me. Well, maybe the fact that they’ll get a crossbow is hilarious, but still.

The NOVA Open announcement gave us a look at the heads of these girls, and they’re looking like they have a good amount of movement there to suggest some pretty dynamic poses within the kits. Interestingly, the 2018 Chapter Approved will include a mini-Codex for the Sisters that will allow for a decent amount of playtesting feedback to be gathered before the Codex itself lands. Ever get the feeling that they’re almost going too far with this? I get that people are keen to get plastic Sisters, and they want the release to be a memorable one – hell, I’ve talked about this myself years ago – but it’s almost like they’re getting too much special attention. Why should one army get so much playtesting, while others get landed with a copy-and-paste Codex just so as to get the book out there? Hm. It’s always going to be a difficult one, for sure, but it struck me this morning when I was reading this stuff, it just seems to be making this too much of A Thing.

Anyway, clearly I’m now one of those old farts who is just never going to be happy!

I’ve been quiet about Age of Sigmar for a long time now, for the simple reason that I’ve been moving away from the game, and focusing more completely on 40k. However, what looks like the return of Slaanesh to any of the game systems simply cannot go un-mentioned! It has always been my favourite of the Chaos Gods (don’t judge me!) so I’m always going to follow what happens here with a keen eye. Expect more blogs when we have more information on this, including one devoted to just why I like Slaanesh so much…

Now, what the hell is this, when it’s at home?! Is it really going to be the new Battlefleet Gothic? The fact there are ships in the announcement video seems to have a lot of people assuming so, but the announcement compares the game to Silver Tower in a way that makes me think we’ll get a similar line-up of infantry-based miniatures battling through the impossible halls of a Blackstone Fortress. Indeed, it’s being described as a dungeon crawl game over on the 40k facebook page, so I reckon we’re definitely getting people miniatures, and not starship miniatures.

(As an aside, I don’t really know if I’d be into Battlefleet Gothic in the same way I’m not into Adeptus Titanicus – I guess cross-compatibility might be an issue for me, after all!)

Intriguingly, the protagonist/voiceover chap in the video seems to be another Rogue Trader, so it may be possible we’ll see some sort of merging of the miniatures from the Kill Team expansion and this in the future…

I am really excited for these two boxed games, if nothing else, so I’ll be saving the pennies from here on, for sure!

Hey everybody!
It’s been a Bank Holiday painting extravaganza for me this weekend! Having two days pretty much to myself, as the other half was in work, I’ve managed to make some amazing progress with clearing the backlog!

First up, I’ve added five more Immortals to my new Thokt Dynasty that I was talking about the other day, giving me now two troops choices, an HQ and an Elites slot, along with a dedicated transport. Hooray! I’ve bitten the bullet and listed a lot of my older Necrons on ebay this weekend, in the hope that it prompts me to really make the effort and paint my current batch of unpainted models. If nothing else, I really want to get the Catacomb Command Barge and a third squad of Immortals painted (tesla this time), and then I’ll have the first Battalion ready! That’s also going to be well on the way to my first list finished, so we’ll see how far I can get with that… It only took me five months to get round to painting these, after all!

Much like last weekend, I’ve been painting a mixture of Necrons and Dark Eldar, my true 40k loves! This weekend, I’ve managed to get the second Ravager finished – something that, annoyingly, I’d been very close to for a long time anyway, as I’d done the main hull back in April. The crew are finished, though, along with the crew for the next Raider that I’ll be working on, so that’s a very positive step!

I’ve also finished off four infantry chaps, in the main because I had a game today and wanted to try out some different things! I’d built up all of these guys back in January, when I was building a lot of Dark Eldar as I was waiting for the Codex to drop, but have finally gotten round to painting them up. I’d picked the two blaster-wielding chaps to finish as I was painting the Ravager crew anyway, but now I need to get moving with another batch of Kabalite Warriors. I have a lot of these guys, as it happens, as I’d originally build up enough to get myself two full Battalions of pure Kabal. Then the Rule of Three came out, and without Drazhar, there aren’t enough HQs to now do this and keep the Kabal Obsession. So I lost interest in the idea, but have now started instead to think of either a Brigade with just three Archons (not even sure if that’s possible?), or else sticking with one Kabal Battalion but having a massive unit of Warriors on foot. I’m not entirely sure what I want to do yet, so we’ll see. I definitely want to get more of the special weapons peppered into my squads, so I’ll probably be working on some of those soon.

It may be nearly five months since I first picked this book up, but I have today had my first game with Codex Drukhari, and it was an absolute blast!

A chap at my local store was looking to try out an army list he’d come up with, but only at 550 points. So I set about building up a basic Patrol detachment, an HQ and two troops (ah, the old FOC!) all in vehicles: two squads of 10 Kabalite Warriors in Raiders, including a splinter cannon in one, and a blaster/agoniser in the other; in a Venom, the Archon (splinter pistol/huskblade) along with a Court of Lhamaean, Ur-ghul and Medusae. Obviously, I was playing Kabal of the Obsidian Rose, so had some pretty decent range on all my weapons.

On the Deathwatch side, there was a squad of Veterans, a squad of Terminators, and a Captain in Gravis Armour. As it happened, my opponent was as great at throwing dice as I was, so it all went quite well! Having nothing much to do against my army, as they were all in vehicles, it felt a bit one-sided, as I was able to shoot up the table from within my Raiders. I charged everybody out of the Venom just for something to do, though was quite impressed with some of the Court characters. I think I’ll look at using them more often!

While I don’t think there’s been much change between the Index and the Codex, the addition of Obsessions is definitely something that I enjoyed. I’ve been playing about with some list ideas off and on for a while, and having been initially very keen to start a Wych Cult this year, I’m leaning more towards the Kabal/Coven lists I used to play during the Index days. So I’m busily planning to paint more stuff to make it what I hope will be a decent enough list to play, so stay tuned there!

Summer Painting Update
So, since my last update on the three armies that I’d wanted to get a move along with, I’ve done very little of any of them! Earlier this month, I had started work in earnest on the Tempestus Scions, though that was primarily for Kill Team rather than the 500-point list I’d outlined here.

The Scions haven’t advanced much at all since I took that photo, but I’m currently keeping them close on the painting table as I’m not going to write them off just yet. The Skitarii haven’t seen much of anything since I started vaguely working on the blue of the Dunecrawler back in June, either:

I blame the arrival of Kill Team and wanting to finish painting the Genestealer Cultists that I’d had one the table since way back when. Having finished a Neophyte Squad, I shouldn’t really complain, of course, but I’d really like to be further forward with a lot of these projects!

While summer may be almost over, I’m not going to be entirely writing off these goals just yet. I feel like I’ve stalled with the Tau, but I always get quite nostalgic for Necrons at this time of year, so I want to use that to get moving finally with my Great Reanimation. I also feel nostalgia for the Skitarii, so we’ll see how far I can get with those, as well! And I definitely want to paint up some more units for the Dark Eldar list I’m working on…

Finished the third of the Space Marine Conquests series this morning, and while I think it was probably the best of the three we’ve had so far, I’m still not entirely sure I like these new breed of Space Marines in the lore.

War of Secrets deals with the Dark Angels, and so we have the usual round of secrets within secrets. It’s actually quite a straightforward story in that regard – the Dark Angels chasing down one of their Unforgiven. The new Primaris are a part of the chase, though of course they aren’t trusted and so don’t fully know what’s going on. So we have a lot of angry marines on both sides, the Primaris for being kept in the dark, the “regular” chaps due to what they see as Guilliman’s spies in their ranks.

Layered on top of this, we have a T’au storyline that involves Shas’O Kais, one of the three star pupils of the legendary Puretide. Kais, heretofore merely a Codex background character, is held in stasis due to the fact that he is an unpredictable ‘living weapon’. However, a conspiracy is launched with Tutor Twiceblade, another of the legendary tutors of T’au society, to launch him again into the front lines.

The stories converge over the planet of Saltire Vex, which has come under some kind of psyker plague, possibly as a result of the presence of the Unforgiven marine (that’s my inference, anyway!). The action follows the twists and turns of both factions, with some decent action scenes throughout, particularly near the end as we see a Ghostkeel battlesuit put through its paces. The T’au side of things was probably the most interesting to me, possibly due to my recent interest in building an army of the blighters, but Kelly is well known for his T’au writing at this point, so it’s probably no surprise there.

While the story was definitely a lot better than the last installment for me, I suppose that was due to the fact I’m a lot less interested in Space Wolves than Dark Angels (and, especially, T’au). But even so, we’re back into this mix of Primaris vs non-Primaris stuff that started off in the first book, though given the First’s penchant for secrecy, the friction is a lot more pronounced here. The way the storyline is concluded, however, did slightly annoy me – I’m trying to avoid too many spoilers in this, but suffice it to say, it felt like too convenient a finale, somehow.

At any rate, I’m sticking with the series, in the hope we might see some really intriguing aspects of the new 40k universe. The fourth book in the series has just gone up for pre-order this weekend, and features the Ultramarines in “a mission of vital importance” to the Indomitus Crusade – interesting, as I thought that was over already. Sounds a bit vague, but I suppose we’ll see! I’m hoping we might see the series move beyond the First Founding chapters, but I suppose I’d rather have a shorter series that just takes us through these than an unnecessarily long series that shambles through the thousands of chapters one by one…

Hey everybody!
Last time, I mentioned the fact that I’d been painting some Necron stuff again, after what felt like an enormous hiatus from the undead space robots. Well, I’ve spent the past week thinking about what to do with the army, and lots of plans have been drawn up and promptly cast aside. However, I think I’ve finally managed to get myself into a vague position where I’m feeling good about the force that I have drawn up, so thought I’d come here today and ramble a bit about my new Necron plans!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will likely know about my love of the Necrons as my very first 40k army from way back in the day. In fact, you can see most of the massed troops that I had painted up to this point in the picture above. Heavy on the infantry, with a lot of Lychguard, because I love the idea of the implacable robot tide. I particularly love the Lychguard kit for its beautiful space skeletons, the armour of those guys is so ornate… Ah, beautiful! Anyway, I’ve been painting Necrons in this silver-and-gold-and-green scheme for a very long time up to this point, and while I do enjoy it, I think I was beginning to tire of it somewhat.

In the main, the fact that this was the colourscheme that I had come up with back when I was first getting into painting miniatures had begun to wear a little on me, as whenever I was adding more units to the army, I felt almost that I had to regress my painting to match the very earliest miniatures I’d painted. So last summer, I decided to repaint the entire Legion. Well, for that reason, and the fact that GW had discontinued Mourn Mountain Snow as a texture paint, so I was faced with the option of no more snow bases!

I came up with my own take on the Thokt dynasty, and painted five Immortals before pretty much calling it a day with these guys for a long time. Moving house probably didn’t help, but I also had developed a love for Drukhari that meant I was focusing my efforts elsewhere instead. However, in the intervening months, I have managed to paint up five Lychguard with warscythes – because Lychguard are awesome, remember – and the new Cryptek from the Forgebane box, because that model just appealed to me like nothing from the recent batch of releases.

All of this has really helped me to get into the new colour scheme for the new army, which is primarily grey-blue rather than the black and blue of the scheme that had originally appealed to me so much from the back of the Immortals box.

So where am I going with all this rambling?

Well, I’ve taken stock of the current models that I have, including those in partial states of completion, and in an attempt to put aside my massive love for Lychguard, I’ve come up with a list that I feel is something that I would want to actually play.

See, this has been a huge problem for me since the new Codex came out earlier this year. All of the models are so damned expensive, my playstyle of having a horde of undead robots doesn’t really lend itself to the new edition. Of course, I suppose 7th edition was hardly good in that respect, either. But I’ll be writing another blog later in the week about the Codex and my thoughts there, so stay tuned for that!

So then, the list:

In keeping with what I’ve been trying to do all summer, it’s a fairly small list that will hopefully allow me to actually get these things painted up without much fuss. So far, I’ve got four of the ten units painted, with all of them built up ready to get done, so I’m hoping to channel my current Necron enthusiasm to get them finished! To add to my sense of urgency, I’ve started to sell off a lot of my older models, as I don’t fancy trying to strip the paint from a lot of those spindly Lychguard and start again – when I tried that last time, I ended up having to build new arms for them all, due to the fact almost everything just broke…

The plan for this list is fairly straightforward, as regards playing it goes. The Immortals are a fire-support as the elite choices move across the board to where they need to be. The Lychguard will start on the Tomb World, and will be beamed to where they’re needed by the Night Sythe, while the Deathmarks will come in when they’re needed to plop down and (hopefully) do some serious work.

Being a small, fairly elite army here, I do feel a little nervy about the Reanimation Protocols, so I’ll want the Cryptek to hang back and buff the Immortals where possible.

It should be a really good start to a 2000-point force, but I also want it to act as something of a core for an army that I think will be a lot more flexible than I’m used to. Normally, when I build armies I tend to think about the cool minis that I want to include, and I’ll swap out only one or two units depending on the situation I’m due to face. With this army, however, I’m actually thinking about roughly half the force being the core, and an additional 900-1000 points being entirely flexible depending on what I’ll be up to. (The Deathmarks and the Triarch Praetorians are currently the two choices that I’m not so sure about – I’m sure one will be staying, and I’m leaning towards the Deathmarks, but I think it does really depend on how they perform on the night…)

I’ve costed up the majority of the models that I have on the go in varying stages of completion, and there are several things that I’d like to bring depending on the situation at hand. Foremost among them is the addition of Orikan the Diviner, the HQ model that I’ve used the most, and for some reason the one I enjoy the most, lore-wise. I’ve also been really keen to field the Doomsday Ark since I first bought the battalion box back in the day. I’ve had the Tesseract Ark built up for about three years at this point, so I want to try and get that built to see what it does, though I am always a little hesitant to use Forge World models due to the reputation they can have.

I’ve only played with my Necrons three times in 8th edition, so I’m no expert in this regard. I feel like having a small number of bodies might be a bad thing, but I suppose the facility to bring them back often (if the unit isn’t obliterated) should mitigate that somewhat. There’s a variety to the list that I enjoy, so I’m hoping that will help, as well.

All in all, then, I’m excited to finally get the Necron force on the table. Time to get painting then, I guess!!

Hey everybody!
Well it’s been a very exciting weekend for me, as I’ve been painting a whole load of miniatures with something close to abandon! I’ve not painted so much for a long time, and it feels great!

First of all, at the back end of last week I had hoped to get a game of 40k in at the local store, with a guy who I know has about 2k points of Deathwatch. So I’d been looking at my Dark Eldar army, which I know is well over 2k, and trying to organise myself into the usual double-battalion of Kabal and Coven. In turn, that got me looking at the box of Dark Eldar that I’ve had primed/partially painted, and pulled out a few bits to start working on. One of which, as it happens, is the glorious Razorwing Jetfighter!

I think this has been built for well over a year now, and has just been gathering dust while primed with Rhinox Hide and ready. Over the course of the weekend, I’ve managed to get the brown armour highlighted, and just need to paint the metallics on the wings to give it that razor-edged look. I’m really pleased to have it in the army, anyway, and I’m already looking forward to when I can get in a game and see how well it does!

I’ve also been working on some Court of the Archon minis – the Ur-ghul and the Medusae, both finecast minis that I’d put together a while back but hadn’t really done a great deal with. I already have a Lhamaean, and have used her a couple of times (though never managed to do anything with her, I think I’m a bit scared about getting my HQs too close into combat, though my Archon has once used a Huskblade to destroy an Ork Boss. Anyway!) I like the idea of having a Court in a Venom and just throwing it at the enemy, and seeing how well they do… Last up, then, I’ll need to get that Sslyth sorted!

I’ve not painted any Drukhari for what feels like an age – I last finished some models for the army in February – though I have got a second Ravager almost finished. I think it was probably the fact I only have one crew member left for the Ravager that prompted me to get some of these models out and start painting them again, actually.

I’ve only ever painted three Reaver jetbikes for the army, but have an absolute ton of them built from last winter, when I wanted to get moving with a Wych Cult force. I’ve used the bikes once or twice in games, and I seem to remember they did really well, so it makes sense to try some more! However, in keeping with the lore, I like the idea of having mine as small tripartite gangs of bikers joining the raiding party for a lark, and so wanted the chassis to be different colours to denote this. Having tried to get red last time, this time I thought I’d go for yellow, as it’s a colour I tend not to bother with (aside from the warheads on my smart missile systems!) So far, I think they’ve turned out really well, anyway!

The last Reavers, I managed to paint in a single session. This time around, however, I evidently have more going on, and so they’re still waiting for a few details to be finished…

It’s a bit of an odd one, given I’ve been painting so much Dark Eldar, but I suppose the return of my Dark Eldar has got me thinking about even older armies, and the Necrons are a force that takes me right back to the very start of my 40k life.

I built this Night Scythe in 2015, and managed to get some of it painted in that time, but I think it was possibly the biggest model I’d painted up to that point (it was certainly the one with the most flat areas), and I was a little nervy about getting it to look good. I was also hopeless at working out a scheme for my Necron vehicles that wasn’t just basically Caliban Green, so it was consigned to oblivion all these years.

Well, last night I had trouble sleeping so, in between painting more on the Reavers, I went through my bag of unfinished Necron models to see what I had. (Yes, they were in a bag – the shame!) In addition to finding the Doomsday Ark I had built, I’ve also got an Annihilation Barge and at least one Tomb Blade that I think I can salvage for the Great Reanimation, but everything else I think will likely need to be stripped before I can go about getting it painted in my new Thokt dynasty colours. If indeed I can be bothered to do that – I’ve often been thinking it might be easier to just sell them off and then start afresh, but I’ve so far only sold off the character models that I’d painted (badly!)

All of this stuff seems to date from 2015, which is quite shocking really. I know one of the things that always keeps me going with Necrons is the idea of the implacable tide of infantry, I thought I’d done more of the war machines than this! It’s definitely time to change that, though I’m still really finding it difficult to come up with a Codex list that I actually like the look of, so I’m not yet sure how I want to play my Newcrons in 8th edition.

I came up with the above back in March when the Codex was fresh, but that is a hell of a lot of infantry, with just the Command Barge as a big thing. It’s definitely time to do more with the Necrons than just Immortals and Lychguard, but the cost of these units is kinda prohibitive, and seems to lend itself much better to large-point games. Having the flyer will, I think, be a huge thing for my force, as it acts as a transport as well, though obviously I wouldn’t want to go filling it to capacity as the way the rules work for the Night Scythe mean that any models that haven’t entered play when the Scythe is destroyed are also destroyed. But I think it could be a very useful delivery system for Lychguard while the Immortals hang back as a bit of a gun-line.

Anyway, I’m rambling a bit here!

So I need to get my act together and write up a Necrons list that I actually like the look of; I’ve got a Drukhari list that I do like the look of, so just need to finish off the couple of models that aren’t yet fully painted so that I can actually field it, and then I should be good to go!

Honestly, I’ve never been as excited for the hobby as I am right now!!

So, this artwork debuted on the 40k facebook page at the weekend, followed by an extremely exciting article that talked about the next “battle box” coming for 40k, Tooth and Claw. Genestealer Cults vs Space Wolves, in bloody battle for the planet Vigilus. Similar to Forgebane from earlier in the year, we’re getting a lot of repackaged models, along with a couple of new bits – this time, we’re heavily weighted to the Genestealer Cults, with the new Aberrant multi-part plastic kit, as well as an Aberrant character, and just one new Space Wolf.

It’s an interesting way to do these kinds of releases, though I have to say I’m a little bit sad that we aren’t just getting the new kits themselves. I do appreciate the fact that we’re having the story advance and whatnot, and ordinarily I love these kinds of narrative-driven boxes, things have changed for me in that I can’t go throwing my money at all the new releases anymore. I’m guessing we’ll see things released separately in time, but that new Cryptek from Forgebane still hasn’t made his clam-pack appearance yet, has he? Hm.

At £90, though, the box is an absolute steal. Assuming the Primaris stuff is not the easy-build kits, the existing models total £148 (though you can’t get the Intercessor combat squad online anymore, so it’s a little bit weird in that regard…) which is just nuts when you think the Aberrants are likely to be around £30 at least, the Abominant will probably be £18, and the Space Puppy around £15… That’s nuts!

Having a Genestealer Cults army already on the go, this box will be a blessing – I’ve been wanting to get some more Metamorphs for a while, and nearly bought some on Friday when I was in the store, so that’s kinda negated now. I already have the Acolyte Iconward, but I’m sure I can either have another or just sell him on. I absolutely love how over-the-top ridiculous the Abominant looks, so can’t wait to add him to the force, as well as having more options for the Aberrants – I think this might finally tip me over the edge into including them in my lists…

It’s the Primaris stuff that’s kinda bothering me, as I’ve recently built a kill-team and decided that I might actually like to have an army of these chaps. I’ll definitely keep the Redemptor, because I’ve been holding off getting one of those for a very long time already. I already have Aggressors, so will probably get rid of those, and will definitely be off-loading the lieutenant chappie as I don’t collect Space Wolves. The Intercessors though… Maybe I’ll keep them, to bulk out the guys from Dark Imperium and the like. I suppose we’ll see.

At any rate, the story sounds like it’s going to be a significant addition to 40k lore, so I’m looking forward to reading up on the developments – indeed, I think 8th edition has done wonders for setting up a more interesting and cohesive narrative for the lore, no matter what people might think of the Primaris stuff. Personally, I like the look of them, so don’t mind it at all, but I know some people are a bit unimpressed, so may not think the same. I’m definitely enjoying the fact that GW are just making efforts with the storyline this time, rather than what seemed to be the case in 7th edition when I jumped on with 40k.

Also, interestingly, there seems to be mention of Orks on the planet, who like to race in the deserts. Gorkamorka it may not be, but I’ve recently been seeing what looks like the next small-box game coming out:

Oh Kill Team, what have you done to me?! I feel like I’ve spent the entire weekend writing up different lists, juggling people around to fill specialisms, and generally losing myself in list-building for skirmish games! I suppose this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it has allowed me to look at a lot of the factions where I’ve not got a lot of work done, and started to think about finally finishing off some of my long-held projects.

So I thought I’d come here once more, and ramble about 40k – though on a smaller scale…

I’ve been off-and-on thinking about a Skitarii army since I first bought the Start Collecting box back in May last year on a whim. Since then, I rather feel like I’ve been drowning in Skitarii miniatures, and between a second SC box, Forgebane, and now Kill Team, I think I probably have enough troops to garrison Mars. There’s something about a huge wave of these robot-men that I like the idea of, so really want to have an army of the blighters.

Team Lambda-Rho-Psi is a fairly standard mix of Rangers and Vanguard – I know the radium carbine is probably a better option than the galvanic rifle, but I already have three galvanic rifle dudes painted and ready, so half the team is already done! I’m therefore thinking I only actually need to paint five guys for this to be a finished team, which feels like a much more manageable option! It also fits in quite nicely with my Summer Painting Goals for the 500-point Skitarii list, although I do need a second plasma caliver-wielding Vanguard for this one.

I do like the army, at any rate, and it’s something that really excites me when I think about the hobby and 40k in general. I really fancy an eventual army with probably two battalions’ worth of Skitarii, along with Dunecrawlers and the like. Ah, wonderful!

These guys have a similar feel, for me, to the Skitarii mentioned above – everything about them just feels classic 40k somehow, and I love the fact that I have them in my line-up. I’ve been thinking for over a year now about getting together an army of just Scions, but since the Codex arrived last autumn, instead I’ve been considering my options for widening the view to take in some of the tanks of the Astra Militarum, also.

As regards the Kill Team, however…

Eight bodies doesn’t seem too much, does it? Especially when you think I’ve already got one painted – the actual Tempestor Prime for the army won’t work in Kill Team, but one of the Tempestors I have for one of my squads will work just as well.

I’ve been putting off painting any more of these so far, mainly because I can’t remember the colours I used. But I think I just need to crack on and get some paint on there, and it should be vaguely obvious what I’ve used. I think it’s Mephiston Red with a shade of Nuln Oil for the carapace armour, but I can’t really be sure.

Anyway. As with the Skitarii, I’m really excited about painting up these Scions, not only because I already have the army in my mind, but I think the models are superb!

The thing with Kill Team, as I’ve said, is that it’s making me think of all sorts of little bands of warriors that I might not otherwise have done anything with. I’m also considering making teams with things like T’au and Drukhari (the latter isn’t too bad, but I’m really finding it difficult to come up with a build I like the look of for T’au).

Well, this one came from nowhere! Right before I moved house last summer, Dark Imperium came out, and I was torn between building things with the new Space Marines and packing my life away. As it happens, I had to do the packing, so played a lot of 8th with Necrons and Dark Eldar, existing armies that I had painted up. With no real time for anything new, Primaris Marines and Death Guard both kinda passed me by, really, though I’ve tried a couple of times to look at the Chaos side of things over the months.

Now, however, after seeing the phenomenal work of Paul Norton and his Iron Ravens on instagram, I’ve found myself wanting to do something with Primaris Marines at last. I’ve actually painted a total of five Primaris Marines since they arrived over a year ago – three Reivers, a Hellblaster and an Intercessor. While I’ve built up quite a few, as it turns out, of the other marines from the box, I’ve only basecoated them with Khorne Red and left it there. Time to do a lot more with them, then, I think!

I’m going for Genesis Chapter, although I have previously thought about doing Novamarines with them as well. I might end up doing a mix, I suppose we’ll see! I know that the shoulder pads work on either flavour, though the Dark Imperium marines are often sculpted with the pads stuck to the arms already, so that may not work out for me. So far, I’ve been quite pleased anyway, though, so I might just continue with Genesis Chapter and be done with!

The squad is the smallest yet, with just six chaps (and I’ve already painted one, so…) I’m planning to use the 30th Anniversary marine for the Sergeant, and then use Dark Imperium guys for the rest.

I think, after playing the game last Friday, I can see a definite advantage to smaller teams, as my 15 Cultists got to the point where they auto-failed Nerve Tests and I was basically just sitting there being picked off. Added to this, Marines should be a lot more durable, so I shouldn’t (hopefully!) get into the position where I’m seeing my guys die off in droves. An all-shooty team should be a plus, too, as I can hang further back than with the more combat-orientated Cultists.

That’s the theory, at any rate!

I’m hoping to be back soon with some progress on getting these chaps painted up, anyway. I only need to do 17 models to get all three Kill Teams on this page fully painted! Shouldn’t take too long…